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CNN Breaking News on Twitter, @cnnbrk, tweeted this morning at 6:38 Pacific that “Iran bans foreign media from covering rallies on streets of Tehran following last week’s disputed presidential vote.”

There’s much buzz over the fact that real news about the post-election reaction in Iran is being covered best by those on Twitter messaging in and out of Iran. The site’s “Trending Topics” sidebar has featured #iranelection at the top spot for more than 2 days.

Links to real time photos and videos, as well as active inside Iran Twitter member usernames are posted regularly.

Many members (Tweeps) have changed their user photos (avatars) to green, and/or included images from Iran, such as green paint dipped fingers making the peace sign. Green is traditionally considered a symbolic color of Islam, but has also come to represent the movement against Iran’s election results.

The action of banning the foreign media from covering the rallies may do little in preventing news from Tweeting out of Iran.

From Google to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, media types and hypes are falling head-over-heels over a 47-million year old primate fossil unveiled to the world Tuesday.
As LiveScience reporter Clara Moskowitz put it: You know science has made it big when the Google homepage logo is changed to celebrate a fossil finding and the mayor of New York shows up at a press conference to unveil it.
The LiveScience article continued:

The discovery was presented with much fanfare at a press conference at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where researchers called the finding a “missing link” and a publisher from Little, Brown (which put out a related book called “The Link”) called it “a scientific discovery that will undoubtedly revolutionize how we understand our own evolution.”

Mayor Michael Bloomberg called the finding an “astonishing breakthrough.”

Not so fast you Ida-lovin’ cousins

‘Ida’ an extinct primate – and that’s all blasts the online headline at OneNewsNow.com. The story by Allie Martin leads: The president of Answers in Genesis says an alleged new “missing link” found by scientists is nothing more than an extinct primate.

According to Associated Press, scientists said while the creature is not a direct ancestor of monkeys and humans, it provides a good indication of what that ancestor may have looked like.

Ken Ham, president of the apologetics ministry Answers in Genesis, finds it ironic that the same scientists, in a research paper detailing their findings, toned down their pronouncements after pressure from colleagues in the scientific community.

“One of those reviewers said that…whether nor not it’s going to be a transitional form, or missing link, is a judgment for the scientific community,” Ham states. “And he’s quoted as saying that [issue] will be sorted out, or at least debated extensively in the community for years, once the paper is published.”

Ham says the fossil is similar to a modern lemur, and in no way resembles a human skeleton.

Watching the Ida spin is simply a matter of catching some headlines from around the world. Here’s an array of headlines and links to accompanying stories. You be the judge!

What other conclusion can be drawn from one of today’s CBS News online headlines? What other connection can we make from the opinion piece that leads with: “Marijuana should never have been made illegal in the first place.”

Should we just give the news giant a pass for publishing a column that advocates weed so strongly?

Now, I know it’s politically correct to include pro-pothead opinion in normal discourse. To openly talk about the legalization of the hippie lettuce is cool…and everything. Heck, what’s wrong with a little medicinal spleef? Right?

I don’t like to name-call, even if we are simply talking about the weed people, but let’s call our Mary Jane for what it really is…I mean, like they said in the nearly half-century old commerical, “Why do you think they call it dope?”

Now, you CBS editors who see nothing wrong with partaking in the bud, where are your journalistic skills and integrity? Lost in a haze of smoke and scattered potato chips?

You could have made it look as though you were simply throwing a bone to the weed people, instead you gave them a fatty headline…btw, did you see your URL tab tag? “Make Marijuana Legal – CBS News.”

Even before openly gay blogger and Miss USA judge, Perez Hilton, confessed that beauty pageant contestant, Carrie Prejean, lost a chance at the crown because of “the way Miss California answered her question,” on gay marriage, the sharks were circling.

Yahoo News declared a Miss California “awkward moment.”

“ABCNews.com paints her as the bad guy for offending the celebrity judge, while failing to mention that a majority of said beauty queen’s fellow Californians agree with her views,” wrote NewsBusters Managing Editor, Ken Shepherd.

Entertainment Weekly on its website: “Miss Cali did no service to womankind — much less the gay marriage movement — with her stumbling answer.”

And the sharks kept circling around Prejean, the 21-year-old blonde bombshell, who attends San Diego Christian College…

Keith Lewis, who runs the Miss California competition, tells FOXNews.com that he was “saddened” by Prejean’s statement.

“As co-director of the Miss California USA, I am personally saddened and hurt that Miss California believes marriage rights belong only to a man and a woman,” said Lewis in a statement. “I believe all religions should be able to ordain what unions they see fit. I do not believe our government should be able to discriminate against anyone and religious beliefs have no politics in the Miss California family.”

When asked by judge Hilton, whether she believed in gay marriage, Prejean, said “We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite. And you know what, I think in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised.”

So, this is what it’s come to…you can be beautiful in America and win beauty pageants, but you can’t win them if you don’t tow the liberal line. Get to the back of the bus, beautiful conservatives!

The message: beautiful women opposed to gay marriage, and who are in support of traditional marriage are not pageant crown material!

And when the heat gets too hot for many liberals, they revert back to name-calling.

NEWS.com.au: On a video blog on his website Hilton said, “She lost not because she doesn’t believe in gay marriage, she lost because she’s a dumb bitch!”

Tolerance? Hardly. Carrie Prejean, who has also modeled for E! Entertainment at the Academy Awards, should have not only been afforded more respect, but judges should now do a recount to check their consciences and vote for the Miss USA winner again.

If it was a traditional view of marriage that cost Prejean the crown, she is the winner through and through…regardless if she is wearing a Miss USA tiara or not.
_______________

Newsweek writer, Jon Meacham, armed with an erroneous survey, first assures us that the ‘Christian God’ is not dead, then proclaims him as “less of a force in American politics and culture.”

NEWSWEEK’S TWEAKING OF AMERICA: part two in a series
By ALEXANDER

Thank you, Newsweek! I was beginning to worry God was a no-vote in the 2008 U.S. election, and just when us dumb Americans were trying to figure it all out, you comforted us by saying God was OK and that he is only “less of a force.”

Here’s how Meacham put it after painting a dreary picture of a Southern Baptist school president, about to suffer clinical depression from the survey news of a “less Christian” nation:

There it was, an old term with new urgency: post-Christian. This is not to say that the Christian God is dead, but that he is less of a force in American politics and culture than at any other time in recent memory.

And all though the story headline proclaims, “The End of Christian America,” Meacham, like some Santa Claus listening to our wish list while we are sitting on his lap, attempts to throw us Christians a candy cane to suck on…

Let’s be clear: while the percentage of Christians may be shrinking, rumors of the death of Christianity are greatly exaggerated.

Again, Meacham does not know that Christianity, a faith in Christ, has nothing to do with religion or denomination. In fact the survey is equally misinformed about it’s so-called conclusions.

For example, the survey says:

“The challenge to Christianity in the U.S. does not come from other religions but rather from a rejection of all forms of organized religion.”

FALSE because Christianity is not “challenged” at all. The body of Christ, His Church, survives eternally. Christianity is not about some membership drive either. There will always be challenges to individual Christians because Jesus was challenged some 2,000 years ago. Why should anything be different now?

“One sign of the lack of attachment of Americans to religion is that 27% do not expect a religious funeral at their death.”

Perhaps a better question to determine a growth or decline in the number of Christians, would be to ask, “When you die, where do you think you will go?” Whether someone wants incense burning, a pastor’s message, or gospel music playing at their funeral has no bearing on whether they have a relationship with Christ or not. The “attachment” anyone should desire before death is to Jesus, not religion.

And so it goes… the survey is skewed, the media misinterprets and bangs the drum of ignorance, and Americans are dished a load of nothing.

Although Meacham surmises:

To the surprise of liberals who fear the advent of an evangelical theocracy and to the dismay of religious conservatives who long to see their faith more fully expressed in public life, Christians are now making up a declining percentage of the American population.

He is wrong because theocracy is the furthest thing from the mind of a follower of Christ. Christians express their faith…whether it is understood or seen in public or not. And certainly, no stray survey or misguided journalist can conclude that Christians, those that have experienced the transforming power of Jesus, are “making up a declining percentage.”

It’s not a small detail, but for most in the media, including Newsweek, the difference between the words “religious affiliation” and a “faith in Christ” (Christianity) does not exist. Apparently unaware that a relationship with Jesus Christ is not about religion or religious affiliation, the words have become interchangeable…especially if they can be used to indicate a decline in faith.

NEWSWEEK’S TWEAKING OF AMERICA: part one in a series
By ALEXANDER

The non-denominational tag that many Christians take while knowing that having an “affiliation” is not the key, also appears to not have been a factor in a recently released survey and subsequent opinion from Newsweek. The “scoop” has the publisher waving the “The End of Christian America” banner headline.

Newsweek staff and writer, Jon Meacham, took the liberty to interpret that a 2009 American Religious Identification Survey showing that “the number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation has nearly doubled since 1990, rising from 8 to 15 percent,” means that Christianity is on the decline in America.

Sucking blood out of a rock, Meacham leads his opinion piece by framing a prominent Baptist school president as being “despairing” and someone who had “grown even gloomier” since the poll results…and since, more than likely, the president began fielding questions from Meacham, who appears to have hedged his interview with pre-conceived notions and this Christian-shattering survey.

Meacham uses plenty of drama in the lead of his story, garnering some geographical data from the poll to illustrate some seismic shift in the “religious” makeup of the United States. Too bad he didn’t investigate further into the movements of the “non-denominational” or growing number of “born againers”…two affiliations missing from the story.

It was a small detail, a point of comparison buried in the fifth paragraph on the 17th page of a 24-page summary of the 2009 American Religious Identification Survey. But as R. Albert Mohler Jr.—president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, one of the largest on earth—read over the document after its release in March, he was struck by a single sentence. For a believer like Mohler—a starched, unflinchingly conservative Christian, steeped in the theology of his particular province of the faith, devoted to producing ministers who will preach the inerrancy of the Bible and the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the only means to eternal life—the central news of the survey was troubling enough: the number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation has nearly doubled since 1990, rising from 8 to 15 percent. Then came the point he could not get out of his mind: while the unaffiliated have historically been concentrated in the Pacific Northwest, the report said, “this pattern has now changed, and the Northeast emerged in 2008 as the new stronghold of the religiously unidentified.” As Mohler saw it, the historic foundation of America’s religious culture was cracking.

To be a Christian is not about being “steeped in theology” or being defined by a “particular province of faith.” To be a Christian is not about proclaiming affiliation to a religion…especially in a survey. A Christian proclaims the Good News of Jesus Christ in many ways, mostly by the life he or she lives.

The “historic foundation of America’s religious culture” maybe “cracking,” but the power that moves people to shout the Good News of Jesus, to give up all to further His kingdom, and to live in any part of the country or world to do so is unshakable…regardless of the prevailing media or social thought.

It’s a bit early in the game to be smash-mouthing Christians…especially when the Newsweeks of the world want to be a part of tweaking America in the wrong direction.
…to be continued in part two.

I wrote here last year that fighting an educated campaign was the only way to go against Barack Obama. The photos of “silly” grandma, Muslim conspiracy chat, piling on Michelle’s verbiage, and thinly veiled racism coming in viral emails were not only over the top, but I feel in part helped Obama win. There was even testimony of Republicans and conservatives turned off by so much of these political hack jobs that they voted for Obama. For the most part, it was an embarrassing time to be a conservative.

Now, and even before, we have Alan Keyes, who often operates below the radar, consistently calling out Obama as only Keyes can. Keyes is such an intellectual (in a positive way), that I often wish he would simply come down to earth and talk with a little more humility. However, he is right on in most cases.

Above is a recent interview with Keyes. Here’s what the Los Angeles Times’ Andrew Malcolm, writes in his blog about the taped interview:

…Keyes, who lost to Obama in the 2004 U.S. Senate race in Illinois that launched the new president’s national political career, calls Obama a communist and usurper and says he refuses to acknowledge the validity of Obama’s inauguration over lingering questions in the minds of many conspiracists about the 44th president’s birthplace.

The video contains comments by Keyes that are alarming. However, closing our eyes and covering our ears, simply falling lock step with Obama Nation would be a mistake. My take? Pray, don’t take part in personal attacks, and wisely oppose that which is not right. Use words if you must!

After all, Obama said in his victory speech, “I especially welcome listening to those with opposing views.”